Crime Reads - Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Gun!
CrimeReads is a culture website for people who believe suspense is the essence of storytelling, questions are as important as answers, and nothing beats the thrill of a good book. It's a single, trusted source where readers can find the best from the world of crime, mystery, and thrillers. No joke,
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“Then he began speaking about himself, and already, to Smiley’s eye, he seemed quite visibly to be shrinking to something quite small and mean. He was touched to hear that Ionescu had recently promised us a play in which the hero kept silent and everyone round him spoke incessantly. When the psychologists and fashionable historians came to write their apologias for him, he hoped they would remember that that was how he saw himself.” —Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré “So how did you get the idea?” asked all eight billion human beings on Earth (or what felt like it) when I let slip that I have a book coming out. Not complaining, of course, it’s nice when a sp…
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When I was growing up on Long Island in the seventies, New York City loomed in the distance as a large and dangerous place. The city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the subway cars were covered in graffiti, and the local papers teemed with headlines about the explosion in urban crime. Rape, robbery, murder—all were at an all-time high, and the Son of Sam stalked the streets, shooting couples in the dark. The NYPD even released a pamphlet titled “Welcome to Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York,” with a drawing of the grim reaper on the cover, complete with helpful tips like “Stay off the streets after 6 p.m.” and “Avoid public transportatio…
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I stood there dumbstruck. A sadsack clutching his parka and briefcase—empty except for a half-eaten bag of Twizzlers—and stepped backward to allow those dismissed from the jury pool to flow past as they’d just been allowed to return to their regularly scheduled lives. Had the bailiff really called my name? But I’d done everything correctly. I’d laid it on thick as syrup when the lawyers quizzed me. Though not an attorney myself, my father is one, taught real estate law for decades and had been dean at a prestigious law school. My wife, an executive at a healthcare organization, was also an attorney. And I’d spent a dozen years at a litigation-support company creating da…
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The moment Noel Moore stepped through the front door and put his bags down, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It was a couple of hours past midnight, so the house was supposed to be quiet, but on top of that stillness was an unease that told him things were not as he’d left them. The bottom floor was a maze of interconnecting rooms full of furniture and fixtures that his wife, Mindy, had picked out with their interior designer. He stepped around overstuffed couches and wingback chairs as he wove through the formal living room, then the dining room, the family room, and the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place in the darkness. Everything appeared as it should ha…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Laura Lippman, Dream Girl (William Morrow) “The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.” –Tom Nolan (Wall Street Journal) Sarah Stewart Taylor, A Distant Grave (Minotaur) “… a fast-paced, tension-filled yarn filled with twists the reader is unlikely to see coming. Taylor tells the story in a lyrical prose style that is a joy to read. She excels in vividly portraying both the rural Ireland and Long Island set…
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In the 1970s, the streets of Harlem were no joke. Although you could still hear James Brown’s funk at the Apollo, catch a flick at the Victoria, buy 45s at Bobby Robinson’s record shop, party with mack daddy players at the Shalimar and eat chicken & waffles at Wells, the community had also become saturated with grime, crime and heroin. As a child of that era as well as that area, I clearly recall the notorious living dead junkies standing in the shadows of tenement doorways, nodding on street corners and plotting on the next person they were going to rob to pay for their fix. Some of those lost souls were disillusioned people who rarely left the hood while many othe…
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The setting of South Kilburn in my autobiographical novel Who They Was, is not a typical literary setting. It is a large housing project in northwest London, made notorious by gangs and crime. I moved there in my teens and lived in an apartment in one of the blocks until my early thirties. Those years were formative, and my experiences there are an integral part of my identity. Unlike some representations I have seen of public housing, my portrayal isn’t of a fetishized location, limited to a criminal battleground, nor is it a politicized zone that cries out about social neglect and institutional marginalization. Of course, by truthfully depicting the things I saw, those…
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While every reader is a book lover, there’s a special subspecies of bibliophile whose passion for rare books goes beyond preordering the latest bestseller. Often, we care as much about the book itself as about the story. The binding, the paper, the illustrations. Books are tangible relics of human history, and showcases of human creativity. And sometimes it is the story we care about—or rather, the way the story moved us the first time we read it. We crave a connection through time with the author who made us feel so deeply, and one way to achieve that is by owning a signed first edition that the author touched with his or her very own hand. Over time, those first editio…
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Stella leaned on the railing and stared out over the lake. Bailey, the treacherous dog, was with Sam, which didn’t really surprise her. She should be happy that Sam walked the property so much, making certain drunken partygoers didn’t fall into the lake and drown. He didn’t let them take out guns and shoot at the sky in some bizarre celebration. Sam didn’t like dealing with the guests but he could repair anything. He would never see to the taxes or business end of the resort, but he would make certain security was tight and everything was running in top condition. If the roads needed plowing, Sam would get it done. She had come to rely on him in a short time without even…
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We all know the PI. You need only rattle off the names—Spade, Hammer, Marlowe, Archer—to conjure the picture. Tough, swaggering, fast-talking, busted nose, cigs, that Webley–Fosbery revolver. They’re Bogie-like, usually, men sure of themselves and sure of their place in the world. They stand firmly at the top of society’s pecking order, even though they ply their shadowy trade by night, solo, down near the docks or in a dive bar, soaked in gin and regret. But, thankfully, the world has grown a li’l bit since Hammett set Spade off in pursuit of “the bird.” The PI has grown up, too, broadened a bit. He, or she, is not as solitary, a lot of the gumshoeing is done from the …
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When I asked suspense author Chris Pavone recently if there were any mysteries or thrillers he’d ever felt compelled to read a second time, his response was blunt: “Zero. Once the puzzle is solved, I have no interest in re-visiting it.” I get it. Part of the reason you tear through a suspense novel—even when it’s waaaay past your bedtime–is to uncover the secret, reach the reveal, finally know whodunit, and of course learn if the protagonist survives the whole awful mess. Once you have the answers, why would you want or need to go back? And yet there have been a few suspense novels over the years that I just had to revisit. Yes, I knew the ending, but I wanted to try to…
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The first time I publicly wrote about my masochism, I was fully prepared to be shamed by strangers. It wouldn’t have been the first time, after all. What I got instead were private messages thanking me for being open about my experiences and a barrage of questions about the best ways to safely enjoy pain. If I’ve learned anything about life, it’s that most of us have a darker side, whether or not we show it to the world. It was a huge driving force behind my debut Walking Through Needles (June 29, 2021, Polis Books), which delves into many types of dark desires. Tapping into those darker needs isn’t always easy (or legal) for people to do, which is the beauty of books.…
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The sight of a human head floating in my local lake—the top few inches of the brown-haired skull, the body submerged vertically beneath—was the moment when my career as a writer of fly-fishing-related crime novels began. It made perfect sense that a dead body would be in the weedy shallows of a busy urban lake where I was fly-rodding from my canoe for spawning bluegill. Why not? People drown in Lake Monona all the time, and the nearest properties were ominous-looking, high-security trophy houses perhaps acquired through obscene business practices, inhabited by mistresses, and on the disputed-asset lists in ugly divorces. It made perfect sense that I would find the bod…
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He would remember that day, always. He was with his mother. They were outside the New York Institute for Special Education, or as the people in the Bronx neighborhood called it——The School for the Blind. There was a small building on the property at the corner of Williamsbridge and Astor where the Institute sold brooms and mops that the blind made there. His mother always bought extras and gave them to friends and neighbors in the apartment building. She was that kind of person. They were standing in the shade of the Institute trees waiting for the streetlight to change when out of the clear blue the boy’s mother said, “Dean…I want you to remember…God is always working …
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Riley Sager, Survive the Night (Dutton) “Sager excels at playing with reader expectations and in concocting plausible, gut-wrenching twists.” –Publishers Weekly John Galligan, Bad Moon Rising (Atria) “As the pages turn, the author prompts readers to consider a range of timely issues (climate change, homelessness, corrosive wealth) via masterfully executed and action-packed storylines that coalesce in a shockingly memorable final act sure to leave readers eager for the next Bad Axe County thriller.” –BookPage Tracy Clark, Runner (Kensington) “Exceptional…The action b…
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There comes a moment in every long-running series character’s journey to step out of time to join the pantheon of the greats and live forever. So why has author Lee Child denied Jack Reacher—the current King of Crime Fiction—immortality? Like everyone else in the free world, I’m a fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. Reacher is a modern-day Conan, roaming the land without attachment or possessions, stumbling into trouble then moving on the second he’s crushed it into dust. Child injects just enough hard-boiled metaphor into his lean, mean prose to keep us aware that while the author has chops, he’s sparing with the hatchet. Before the Jack Reacher series became the j…
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The last couple of years have kept Barry Gifford as busy as ever. Since 2019, the prolific novelist, poet and screenwriter has had three new collections of his prior work come out—Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, an expanded edition of his most iconic series; Southern Nights, as an omnibus volume containing three early novels; and Roy’s World: Stories 1973–2020, which collects, for the first time, all of his loosely autobiographical tales of misspent youth in Chicago—as well as a newly released Western novella, Black Sun Rising / La Corazonada. Supplementing this literary bounty are two films: the new documentary Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago, which combin…
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I love to garden. I always have. But there came a time when my shoulders wouldn’t let me do the heavy lifting. Planting planters was about as difficult as I could manage without injuring myself. But one day when I was at a Renaissance Faire, I came upon a woman who was selling fairy gardens, and my eyes lit up. Instantly, I became enamored with the art. I’m not a crafty person—I can sew and bake and color inside the lines—but until now, I had rarely used a glue gun, so designing adorable cards or making jewelry or furniture were out. However, fairy gardening was right up my alley. There were twinkling lights and pretty plants and the most adorable fairy figurines in eac…
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It’s been years since our protagonist gave up his life of crime. He’s gone straight now. He just wants to be left alone to live the quiet life. He’s served his time, paid his debt to society and is ready to reconcile with his estranged daughter. Then, with a knock on the door, the past walks in. It’s Old Partner and Old Partner is in way too deep with some bad people. He needs Protagonist to help him. He needs to steal the thing in a heist no one thinks is possible. Also, if Protagonist ever wants to see his estranged daughter again, he’s only got 72 hours to pull it off. It’s time for one last job… There is something inherently lovable about the heist story. They have b…
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“Life doesn’t have a narrator – it’s full of lies and half-truths – so we never know anything for sure, not really. I like that.” “So fiction really is fiction,” Brunetti asked. Paola looked across at him open-mouthed in surprise. Then she put her head back and laughed until the tears came. –The Temptation of Forgiveness (2018) \Guido and Paola Brunetti know a great deal about lies and half-truths, and all the other human failings, he as a commissario (detective superintendent) in the Venice police, she as a professor of English literature beset by lazy students and self-important colleagues – but still, after more than twenty years of marriage, they make each other l…
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This month’s best international releases for crime readers aren’t all strictly crime novels, but they all capture that peculiar blend of misery and beauty that drives the best works of noir fiction. This month’s selections include: a doomed romance in a refugee camp in Turkey, a Maltese Falcon-esque search for a statue in Cuba, a bizarre novel of behind-the-scenes manipulation and comical doubling out of Japan, and a bleak novel of intrigue and desperation set in Mexico City. As we all head out to finally travel, these novels serve as both guides and warnings, reminding us that there is much below the glossy surface wherever we may be. Dolores Redondo, The North Face o…
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During long stretches of the war against Hitler, German bombs were a part of day-to-day life in British cities. The Führer’s first air campaign against British civilians, known to Britons as the Blitz, lasted from September 1940 to May 1941 and led to the dropping of tens of thousands of tons of explosives across the country. London alone was hit by seventy-one major Luftwaffe raids. The bombers were back over Britain in February through May 1944 with Operation Steinbock, the so-called Baby Blitz. The following month brought the V-1s—winged drone aircraft, of which the Germans launched more than ten thousand across the English Channel. The deep growl of a V-1’s engine in …
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Last week, in our Summertime Crime Movies series, we spotlighted urban summer crime films: movies where the heat is so hot, your ice cream cone won’t stand a chance. But this week, we’re spotlighting summer crime movies set in small towns, where things may not be as bustling, but the atmosphere will be just as tense. The thing about crime movies set in small towns is that so many of them are set in the wintertime. Fargo! Winter’s Bone! The Burned Barns! Wind River! A Simple Plan! Blow the Man Down! Alas. ALAS. I wish we could include them, but who wants to watch a film about the cold, right now? Maybe me, actually, because it’s really in New York. In the Heat of the Nig…
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It’s been a little more than a year since George Floyd Jr. was killed by police in Minneapolis. His death—at the time the latest in a string of high-profile deaths of men and women at the hands of police—galvanized a nation and a movement and caused many people to reconsider how they feel about policing and some police officers. It’s also been a little more than a year since “Bosch,” an outstanding police series streaming on Amazon Prime Video, aired its most recent episode, the sixth season finale. When the seventh and final season of “Bosch”—based on the popular and long-running series of crime novels by Michael Connelly—debuts on June 25, will the series reflect the …
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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new nonfiction crime books. * Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History (Random House) Margalit Fox crafts a rollicking good tale of spiritualism, deception, and escapades in her latest foray into narrative history. In 1917, two prisoners of war in a remote Turkish POW camp during WWI—Harry Jones, the son of a gentleman, and Cedric Hill, an working-class Aussie—managed to dupe their captors into letting them escape, using only a ouija board, rumors of treasure, and their own skills at sleight-of-hand. Read here about the construction of the prisoners’ ouija…
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